Once upon a time, it was popular to say that the U.S. government only had enough wheat stored up to provide everyone in America with half a loaf of bread. But that is not true anymore. Recently, I discovered that the U.S. does not have any strategic grain reserves left at all. Zero. Nada. Zilch. As you will see below, the USDA liquidated the remaining reserves back in 2008. So if a major food crisis hit this country, our government would have nothing to give us.

On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 588 points. It was the 8th worst single day stock market crash in U.S. history, and it was the first time that the Dow has ever fallen by more than 500 points on two consecutive days. But the amazing thing is that the Dow actually performed better than almost every other major global stock market on Monday. In the U.S., the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both did worse than the Dow.

Steve Cutts is a London based illustrator who has worked with big names like Coca-Cola, Virgin and Nokia. He cut his ties recently and went freelance, producing more personal and opinionated illustrations that really sum the world up.

Russian researchers in the late 1940’s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn’t kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month.

Accidental carbon monoxide poisoning killed a single father and his seven children in their one-story Maryland Eastern Shore home, police said.

Lloyd Edwards told The Associated Press that his stepson, 36-year-old Rodney Todd, had bought a generator after the power was shut off to the home in Princess Anne, about 60 miles southeast of Annapolis. Edwards told the AP that the victims included Todd and Todd’s two sons and five daughters.

Europe: the crisis of illegal refugees that Central Europe is confronting with seems to be out of control. Thursday morning, on August 27, on a highway in Central Europe close to the border between Austria and Hungary, policemen discovered the dead bodies of 71 illegal immigrants, lying under a refrigerating truck, abandoned next to the highway. 59 of them were men, while the rest were women and children, most of them from Siria. Their bodies were already in decay and the Austrian authorities declared that, from the first tests, the people most probably died by suffocation about two days ago.

Instead, a Philadelphia cop was caught on camera using the threat of force to insist that two guys he pulled over during a traffic stop buy tickets for a fundraiser to support the families of fallen first responders.

An individual identified as Vester Flanagan shot and killed TV news reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward live on air as anchors in the studio watched in horror. Police report that Flanagan later shot himself on Virginia’s I-66 after a police chase.

What has been happening on Wall Street the past few days has been nothing short of stunning. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 358 points. It was the largest single day decline in a year and a half, and investors are starting to panic. Overall, the Dow is now down more than 1300 pointsfrom the peak of the market.

Many households prepare for emergency cases such as disasters and earthquakes by organizing food and storage supplies that they will use for their survival. The power of the nature is impressive and we have passed through many hurricanes, snow storms and tornadoes to be aware of the fact that we need to take precautions if we want to protect our families and pets when use this food and water supplies.

Yet another voice has warned that the world teeters dangerously close to a repeated and prolonged financial disaster.

With everything so connected, trouble in China means contagion in the rest of the global market, according to David Stockman, a former U.S. Representative, Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget and an investor for several major Wall Street firms.

The Los Angeles suburb Huntington Park made history, as the first city in the United States to official appoint undocumented, illegal immigrants as city officials.

Some locals are infuriated after a city councilman made the announcement, sounding a sharp cry of opposition, but even so, the point of no return has been crossed — illegal immigrants are becoming an official part of the government.